It’s a rare example of English being simpler than other languages, so I’m curious if it’s hard for a new speaker to keep the nouns straight without the extra clues.
Not all other languages have gendered nouns. Articles and affixes are usual points of pain I see (as someone who grew up in a monolingual English-speaking household), and of course the whole orthography mess with spelling is terrible (how can ough have like 6 or 8 pronounciations?!). If you want fun, some languages have distinctions between inanimate and animate things as well as cases that don’t exist in English as well if you want to look in fun other features.
Swedish has genders, but not male/female but utrum/neutrum.
These are not really rule bound, and has to be learned word by word.
Some words are even double gendered but means different things depending on what gender is used.
Example
“En borr” / “borren” = a drill / the drill
“Ett borr” / “borret” = a drill bit / the drill bit.
But to answer your question, English is in many ways simpler than Swedish, you can specify any article by just putting “the” in front of it. In Swedish you need to select the proper -en/-et suffix with no real hard snd fast rule.
Where english is annoying is compound words.
“Realisationsvinstbeskattning” is the longest word in the Swedish dictionary, it is made up of three separate words,
Realisation - Sale
Vinst - Revenue
Beskattning - taxation
So the word simply means taxation on sale revenue.
According to Guinness book of world records the longest Swedish from 2006 the longest Swedish word is:
nordvästersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten
But that is just ridiculous and looks like it comes from a report for the military where someone made the word because they could and enjoyed languages.
Lets break it down into individual words
nord-väster-sjö-kust-artilleri-flyg-spanings-simulator-anläggnings-materiel-underhålls-uppföljnings-system-diskussions-inläggs-förberedelse-arbeten
I am on mobile and the word would take too long to translate here, but it means
“Preparatory groundwork for the discussion on maintenance systems for materials used in the coastal artillery’s flight reconnaissance simulator covering the north western costal sector.”
The issue with English for a Swedish speaker is the lack of compound words, making Swedes used to separating compound words when writing. Which can have fun results:
Herrskjorta = mens button down shirts
Herr skjorta = Mr. Skjorta
Kassapersonal = Cashier
Kassa personal = terrible staff members
Technically English is my third languge, but also simultaneously my most fluent.
In short, not confusing at all. Because in Chinese (any variation of Chinese) nouns are also not gendered.
Pronouns in Chinese are also not gendered
He = 他 (tā)
She = 他 (tā)
No confusion with pronouns either. My parents constantly say he when refering to a woman, or she when refering to a man, or mix them up while talking about the same person in the same conversation. No me tho, I never get confused. I learned English at like grade 2-3.
What? She in Chinese is 她. It might not be used often but it definitely is gendered…
Nope. 她 isn’t really used. 他 is the pronoun, even if its refering to women.
Like if you wrote 他 to refer to a woman in an essay on a test, it’d get marked as correct.
Edit: Although, on the internet, people commonly type “TA” instead of “他”.
Edit 2: So clarification
他 refers to both men and women
她 can only be used to refer to women, and this is rarely used, except maybe in english class to teach about the english pronouns
它 refers to non humans, like animals or objects
all 3 are pronounce the same exact way (tā)
hmm, idk man, over here 他 is only for men, and 她 is only for women.
though in speaking we just use 佢 because canto
in my language nouns aren’t gensered either so it was pretty easy
Easy, no problems at all. English articles are what breaks my head.
Wow, really? “A, an, and the”? I’m curious how you get confused with those.
…because its the articles which are not gendered, not the nouns.
As the speaker of an English language me can tell you is not a difficult.
It’s not, why would that even be a good thing? Get rid of adding identifies to objects like a 6yo.
As someone trying to learn Spanish I wish there was no gendering in Spanish. It makes the language significantly harder to learn.
It’s not confusing at all, except in the very specific case of nouns referring to people or animals that don’t have gendered variants.
For example, in my language, the word corresponding to “(a) sheep” has a masculine and feminine form, with the feminine used neutrally. Consequently, when seeing “sheep” in English, I assume the feminine and seeing it used with “he” is a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Similarly, most words for human professions are by default masculine.
I remember reading a story written in English, and it kept mentioning „the cook“ (no pronoun, no name). My gender biased brain assumed the cook must be male. So I got confused when the pronoun „she“ finally appeared. I had to reread the paragraph to understand what was going on.
Embarrassing and eye opening.Ive spent some times on farms and haven’t ever herd/used he for a singular male sheep before.
If its a singular male I would say the ram.
But its just normally sheep, generally female. If you want to be specific its weathers, ewes, lambs or rams.
not at all. it simplifies the learning experience by quite a bunch.
one of the more confusing is learning other gendered languages where the gender of some object is different to the one in your mother tongue
To make matters worse, some languages have the exact same word but with a different gender. Heat in Spanish is el calor but in Catalán is la calor
To make matters even worse, in some languages the exact same word with different gender has different meaning.
In German:
“der Band”, male, = a (book) volume
“das Band”, neutral, = ribbon
“die Band”, female = (music) bandBonus: “die Bande” can be a gang, a sports barrier, and (relationship) ties.
It’s sure nice not having to learn German. I’m a native.
Yeah I basically never thought about the gender of English nouns because there’s very few reasons to
one of the more confusing is learning other gendered languages where the gender of some object is different to the one in your mother tongue
That’s something I hadn’t really considered. Interesting!
Not.
English is a very straigh forward to learn language.
Now, an English native speaker learning a gender declining language… oh, how fun to watch.
I find it fairly easy to learn but insanely difficult to master
I speak my native language for a couple of decades now and the more I speak it, the more I realize I don’t master it.
I can read, write and hold a conversation in English. But if asked, I will say I can get by but very far from even the lowest level of mastery.
Not at all, it’s easier that other gendered languages since object genders get shuffled up.
no, we just learn that “der”, “die”, “das”, “den”, “dem” all translate to “the”
Took German and college and the reverse really sucked with those forms of the
If you want to be more confused, you should know that some languages have gendered verbs.
The nouns still are gendered. Only the article is gender-neutral.
Tarzan is a man. He lives in the jungle.
Jane is a woman. She is visiting Africa.
The elephant is a non-named animal. It eats fruits and leaves.
If you really want to know a confusing issue about the English language, just look at the pronunciation of words. It is more or less rule-free, and all over the place. Don’t believe me? Try to read the poem “The Chaos” aloud. Even most native speakers need several attempts.
It still bugs me that Sean Bean’s name doesn’t rhyme.
That’s because Sean isn’t an English word.
Most English words aren’t English words, which doesn’t help.
Not with that attitude it doesn’t!
Where, were, ware…
Wear
I will read that book again that i read before
Not at all, it makes it simpler, in many cases you don’t even need it or is even simpler to convey the gender in other ways